IBM Helps Finnish Transport Agency Manage Finland's Road Network

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HELSINKI
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05 May 2010:
The Finnish Transport Agency, which is responsible for the national road network, is working with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to build a single view of road and traffic information, in order to help improve road management.

Using analytics from IBM, the agency is aggregating its view of road conditions, accidents and other road and traffic information, which helps build a safer and more adaptive road system for the citizens of Finland.

"Working with IBM, we have been able to dramatically improve The Finnish Transport Agency's information services," said Project Manager Kristiina Laakso of The Finnish Transport Agency. "We are able to combine information from previously isolated silos into one single view and utilize this complete view to analyze information. Road users will benefit from a safer and smoother flow of traffic while The Finnish Transport Agency will benefit from increased efficiency of our operations."

Analyzing gathered information makes it possible to improve road management and traffic safety, and make the government agency's own activities more efficient. By using analytics, potentially dangerous road sections can be recognized and the information used for road maintenance purposes. The analytics solution is also compatible with maps from the ESRI geographic information service, which makes it possible to display information directly on a map.

"Road management is a complex system, which combines a great deal of different types of information collected from different sources," said Juha Hulkkonen, IBM development manager. "Due to modern analytics solutions this information can be combined and analyzed intelligently to support planning by building different scenarios, for example."

The automatic access to information brings huge time and cost savings. Constituencies of The Finnish Transport Agency can also utilize the solution. For example, as workloads tied to answering offer requests decrease and fundamental information is directly available to contractors, the government agency's time is freed and can be engaged in other tasks. Gathering the information needed for one contract tender process previously took two to three weeks, but with the new solution the road network information is automatically reported and displayed on a map.

The analytics solution is part of The Finnish Transport Agency's extensive information systems development project. Responsibility for the solution's implementation has been handled by Logica.

Business analytics allow organizations to make predictions and discoveries based on data. Predictive analytics allows organizations to better understand and predict future behavior and answers questions like, which route to a destination is more likely to be congested at a certain time of day.

IBM has invested more than $10 billion in business analytics which includes organic innovation and acquisitions. In addition, IBM has assembled 4,000 analytics consultants with industry expertise, and opened a network of seven analytics centers of excellence.